A new take on waste; French Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant to switch energy source (with video)

MORNING JOURNAL/SAM GREENE
Five 100 horsepower pumps pump more than 6 million gallons of water per day at the French Creek Water Treatment Plant in Sheffield Village. The 100 horsepower motors will soon be upgrade to 200 horsepower models, doubling the daily pumping in the station which is also capable of adding five more pumps to allow the plant to grow with demand.

SHEFFIELD VILLAGE -- By 2014, the French Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant will operate on renewable energy as a result of a partnership with quasar energy group.

The French Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, 2350 Abbe Road, provides waste removal services for 80,000 residents in Avon, North Ridgeville and Sheffield Village. The three communities are connected by a 14 mile intercepted piping system that feeds into a well and runs underneath the treatment plant.

In 2011, French Creek and quasar began discussions for a renewable energy facility after the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency imposed federal mandates on waste removal regulations.

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"OEPA regulations forced French Creek to do things a different way," said North Ridgeville Safety Service Director Jeff Armbruster. "We looked for alternative ways to get rid of sludge and then we looked at the overall cost of what the EPA did. We needed to find an answer that involved someone else being in charge of this stuff. It was through those discussions we met quasar."

Quasar energy group is a Cleveland-based company that specializes in organic waste digestion to produce clean, renewable energy. They're a collaborate of The Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, which is the largest agbioscience research center in the nation. Quasar received some funding for the French Creek project with a $1 million federal stimulus grant through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's State Energy Program.

Not long after, quasar constructed a $6 million facility on the French Creek property which sits roughly 100 yards from the waste water treatment's centrifuge building.

After the solids are extracted by the centrifuge, the slurry is piped to quasar's anaerobic digester.

The 980,000 gallon digester uses microorganisms to break down organic material. Oxygen is then removed creating bio gas which gets converted into electricity and connected to a 600 kilowatt generator that powers the French Creek facility.

The digester creates one megawatt per hour or enough electricity to power 618 homes per day.

"All we do is process it," Armbruster said, "quasar has to remove it. But we arranged a power purchase agreement with quasar that produces less power from the grid and less power from the generator."

When the French Creek facility opened in 1975, waste removal was conducted by placing waste in dry beds and letting the sewage compost naturally.

"We would bag it up and give it to farmers or residents," Armbruster said.

Since 2005, the French Creek has been using aerobic digesters which are similar to anaerobic digesters, but process waste with oxygen instead of underground. The waste goes through a series of filtering stages before it is broken down into a range of consistencies.

Workers remove the waste by the truck loads.

When quasar's system comes on line in 2014, contracting with them will reduce French Creek's waste removal cost by roughly 98 percent.

"We were paying $22 per ton for waste removal, now we will be paying the equivalent of $2 per ton using quasar. It's a win-win situation," Armbruster said.

The French Creek partnership with quasar will likely cut back on operating and waste removal funds, but the savings doesn't mean lower sewer bills for taxpayers.

"The money we save will reduce our electric bill," said French Creek superintendent Corey Timko. "The advantage we receive from quasar is primarily the sludge removal."

After many discussions and considerations, Armbruster said contracting quasar is well worth it as the advantages down the road are endless.

"We wanted to go beyond tomorrow," he said. "We wanted to look into the future and see how we were going to solve our problem in the long-term. It made all the sense in the world that this was a direction we should go. We're saving money by paying other people."